


All These Things That I've Done (If You Can Hold On)

by fearbuck



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Eventual Fluff, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mild Angst, Pining, lot of dying but don't sweat it, mild depictions of depression, mild depictions of violence, nat is hella bi, netflix marvel later in chapters, non-romantic Bucky and OFC, sharon is hella gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-08-29 09:39:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8484448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearbuck/pseuds/fearbuck
Summary: Steve, Nat, and Sam find an unlikely ally when bringing down SHIELD that ends up changing everything. CATWS-Infinity War.





	1. Freckles??

**Author's Note:**

> I really appreciate comments and kudos, it really fuels me. Only my second AO3 fic currently. I had another version of this under a working title but forgot about it and got super busy, I've re-worked it a bit so here ya go.

* * *

 

In the three years since he was defrosted Steve has seen a lot: smartphones, the internet, the vaccine for polio, and an alien invasion. The latter being terrifying. The future was good, great even. What wasn’t great was Steve. In those three years he realized just how much he missed the 40s and everyone in them. Mostly of Peggy and Bucky.

He’s mostly mad at himself for not being able to go to Bucky’s funeral. Crashing the Valkyrie into the Arctic hadn’t included surviving in his plan, thus no regret. Now he wishes he had come up with an actual plan, one that meant going home in the end, going dancing with Peggy, burying Bucky, marrying Peggy, having kids with Peggy, growing old… with Peggy. At least he’s with her now he figures. Even though on most days she has no idea who he is.

Steve had thought that moving to DC was the best option for him, he’d be close to Pegs and to SHIELD. Every night was the same though, dream about Bucky. Not the one he knew last, the light hearted, fun loving Bucky, before the war got to him. He tries so hard not to think of him during the war, which only leads to Steve waking up crying. Most nights he does exactly that though. When he was living in New York he visited Bucky’s headstone, hoping it could give him some kind of closure, it never did.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve’s week has been a mess. He makes a new friend (?), he gets a little action on a boat which turns into a lot of action, comes back to DC, and now someone is in his apartment. You’d think Captain America would have all his weeks look like this, but no, not lately.

The music coming from his apartment is familiar to him, one of his records. He climbs in through a window, quietly creeping through his own home so he doesn’t alert his unwelcomed guest. Grabbing his shield from where he leaned it against the wall after the boat incident, he peeks around the corner only to see Nick Fury of all people. Just casually sitting in his chair, listening to his record player…. In the dark?

“I don’t remember giving you a key” he says as he starts to relax a bit. Only a bit though because what the fuck is the Director of SHIELD doing in his apartment at this time of night just sitting in the dark?!

Fury sits up straighter in the chair, “you really think I’d need one” he starts, “my wife kicked me out”.

That kind of throws him for a loop, “didn’t know you were married”. Since when had Fury been married? All this time or just recently?

“A lot of things you don’t know about me” Fury spits out.

Steve huffs and goes to turn on the lamp next to Fury when he says, “I know, that’s the problem”. He flicks the light on, Fury looks like he’s been through hell. He just mimes for Steve to be quiet, holding his finger to his closed lips. The light is off again. Fury begins typing something into his phone, then turns it to show Steve: _EARS EVERYWHERE_. That startles him, he suddenly feels very uneasy. “I’m sorry I had to do this but I had no place else to crash” is all Fury says. _So I guess we’re giving them a show_. Another message: _SHIELD COMPROMISED_. It’s getting worse, his level of unease. _Shit. This is bad_. So Steve plays along, “Who else knows about your wife?”

Fury gets up from the chair now, another message: _YOU AND ME._ But he says, “Just my friends”, as he gives Steve a knowing look.

“Is that what we are?” He bites back.

And Steve should have probably expected this from Fury when he lets “that’s up to you” fall out of his mouth. What he really didn’t expect were the gunshots that suddenly flew into his apartment and right into the man in front of him, three calculated shots right in his abdomen. Steve goes into panic mode immediately, dragging his body around the corner and away from the window. He looks and sees a figure on the roof across the way and moves to leave when Fury grabs his wrist and handing him a flashdrive that he saw earlier this week, on his mission on the Lemurian Star, Natasha was loading info on it, why was Fury giving it to Steve now? He makes eye contact with Fury in his confusion, “Don’t. Trust. Anyone” Fury gets out with what little breath he has.

That’s when his neighbor, Kate, comes charging in. Kate? Not Kate. She says she’s SHIELD. In that all he hears is something about “Agent 13”. She mentions something about protecting him under Fury’s order and that sends him off the rails. Fury didn’t trust him, he had him watched by SHIELD, who is now compromised? By what? Or who? When ‘Agent 13’ calls in for an ambulance be remembers the shooter and takes off in his direction. He’s furious. Which he immediately both laughs at because he’s incredibly punny, but also scolds himself because it is not time for jokes. He leaps into the next building, running so fast that he can't stop himself when he goes to turn a corner. Instead he just smashes into it with his shield to stop himself and continues pursuing the shooter. Another leap out a window and onto the building next door’s roof he finally sees him, dressed in black with long dark hair. Without even thinking he slings his shield at the man’s back expecting him to go down, but instead the man whips around a catches it in his metal hand. _That’s never happened before_ is all he can think. The man throws the shield back with incredible force, that’s when he notices the mask covering his face from the nose down. He manages to catch the shield but in doing so he’s pushed back a good couple feet. When he looks back up for the man it’s just him and the wind.

 

* * *

 

After Fury’s death in the hospital later that same night he meets with Alexander Pierce, the new Director of SHIELD. Steve trusts Fury when he said not to trust anyone, so he doesn’t trust Pierce, flat out lies when he asks him what Fury was doing at his apartment that night. Which also means that he doesn’t necessarily trust him when he says that Fury was the one that bugged his apartment. Especially when he says that the pirates from the Lemurian Star were hired by Fury. Steve finds that he doesn’t care, he does care about the slight threat that Pierce makes against him when he tells Steve that if anyone gets in his way of finding out who killed Fury, they’ll regret it. Steve trusts him when he says that.

As he waits for the elevator he can’t help thinking about if Fury really meant that he couldn’t trust him as well. He’s pulled out of this thought when the elevator dings and the doors open. He hears footsteps behind him as he enters the lift, he pushes the button to go down when he notices it’s only one of Fury’s researchers. As the doors begin to close she begins walking as quickly as she can as she says, “hold the lift”. His hand reflexively moves between the doors to hold them open. As she moves between the doors and into the lift he gives her a friendly smile and asks, “what floor?”

She makes eye contact, her speckled-hazels meeting his baby blues. She blushes which immediately makes him blush a little as well. “I actually just needed to speak with you, Captain” she manages to squeak out.

“Oh?” he says very smoothly. He kicks himself for being so rude to this poor girl. Woman? Yes. Woman.

She realizes her mistake and introduces herself, “Valerie Jaimes, Head of Research. I was working closely with the Director”. She’s nervous he figures, by the way she fixes her curls even though they look fine, they remind him of Peggy’s a bit, but also by the way her arms are antsy as she hold a file folder in her hands that keeps shaking.

“Of course, it’s nice to meet you Ma’am” he gives her a nod that from anyone else wouldn’t feel like much, but from Captain America, it’s like winning the Nobel Prize.

She levels herself and begins speaking, “I managed to get my hands on cctv of the accident before The Director was shot”.

He suddenly gets very interested in what this woman has to say, she can tell too because she immediately pulls up the file and out an image of a man in all black tactical gear in oncoming traffic. “I believe this man was the main event”.

“What?” he asks, obviously confused by what she had said.

Her head looks back down to the image, “Earlier in the recording he was attacked by a squad of men dressed as police, he managed to escape though”.

“Do we know who this man is yet?” he asks very hopeful, but is crushed when she says “No”.

The elevator dings as it stops on a floor, the woman shoving the image back into the folder as the doors open for Rumlow and the rest of the STRIKE team. The woman quietly exits the lift and Rumlow’s eyes follow after her as he enters the lift with the rest of his team.

 

Agent Jaimes returns to her desk just as everyone begins crowding the windows, when she finally gets a look out the window all she sees is Captain Rogers running from a huge pool of glass on the ground. She looks up, recalling how she left the Captain only minutes ago.

 

* * *

 

The only good thing out of Steve’s week so far has been that all this led to Steve seeing his new friend, Sam, again. Sam is really chill, especially when two Avengers show up at his place looking like they’ve been to Hell and back. But his week just gets weirder when he finds out what Sam meant when he said he was a Para-rescuer. Steve thought more parachute and less metal people wings.

Sam and his wings come in handy with an interrogation with Jasper Sitwell, meaning Natasha kicked him off a building and Sam flew him back up looking like he had just peed his pants, which led to him spilling his guts about Project Insight.

As they were driving on the over pass shit quickly hit the fan. Sitwell was ripped out the window of Sam’s car and into oncoming traffic where he gets hit by a particularly huge semi. Panic ensues, Sam stops the car abruptly sending the man on the roof flying in front of them. The masked man recovers quickly though. They are hit from behind and the man once again is on top of the car. Pretty soon that very familiar metal hand is smashing through the front window and ripping out the steering wheel. Bullets fly as Natasha begins shooting at him through the roof of the car. The man leaps onto the car behind them and it smashes into them once again, pushing them against the barrier.

Steve quickly forms a plan as to how they won’t die in this car accident waiting to happen and pushes the door off the car mid take off and has both Sam and Natasha land safely on the door with him. They skid, Sam falls off at some point but safely rolls behind them. That’s when the metal-armed man pull out a rocket launcher and shoots straight for them, Natasha and Sam take cover behind abandoned cars while Steve awaits the impact with his shield. The impact sends him flying down below the over pass and into a bus. Civilians are standing around further away, watching the fight.

There are more shots and another from the masked man. Natasha gets off the over pass and shoots at the man above. She runs off and the man jumps down onto a car after her. Steve recovers and leaves to go find the man. He covers himself from the spray of bullets from on top of the over pass as he scans the area, no sign of Sam or Natasha or the masked man. That’s when he hears it, someone speaking German, very angry German.

He follows the voice and finds masked man pinned down on his stomach with a woman struggling on top of him, for a moment he thinks she’s Natasha the way she’s dressed in a leather jacket except she’s wearing a hood. She seems to match the masked man more with her all black get up though. His German is a little rusty but he makes out her saying “Go there. Do as I say, right now”, he thinks something along those lines. This woman must be helping the masked man. That’s when he very stupidly says, “Hey, you!”

The woman is alarmed and turns around to him, she has a very plain face, with plenty of freckles. She lunges for him and so he takes evasive measures. She pulls a knife out of her boot and gets it very close to his neck. She quickly looks around for the masked man but doesn’t find him. _Shit, please don’t let him get away_ he hopes. In the moment she takes to look Steve gets the upper hand and pins her between him and the pavement where he manages to knock her unconscious by hitting her head back against the concrete. Natasha finds him just then and they drag the woman a few yards when Sam comes down from the sky with his wings.

“Who the hell is this?” he says in a light tone, a nice break from what is going on around them. Natasha looks to Steve just then.

Steve looks down at the woman’s freckled face, “She helped the guy escape”.

Sam and Natasha share a look but Nat is the one to open her mouth, “Are you sure he escaped?”

“Yeah, she was telling him to go somewhere like she was going to meet him there, when she engaged me he took off”, he huffs out, disappointment evident.

The ongoing stream of gunfire in the distant stops, it doesn’t sit well with Steve. He looks around the corner of the alleyway and sees the men on top of the over pass loading into their tac van and leaving the scene. Steve lets out the breath he was holding, “probably going to meet up with their guy”.

“What? So they’re just gonna leave their girl behind?” Sam points out.

Steve just shrugs, “Their loss is our gain”.

They’re all quiet for a moment, catching their breaths and assessing damage. They all agree they’ll live and then all stare at the unconscious woman on the ground next to them. “I think I know somewhere we can go” Sam breathes out.


	2. Suck My Dick??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so I apologize for any Germanic errors, I am not necessarily fluent so there is some Google Translate used. Any speech in another language will be given a translation how it appears in this chapter or I will just not use the German and immediately translate it "".
> 
> I am trying to upload as quickly as I can just because I don't want to forget about this. Also, if you happen to catch any spelling or grammatical errors that have escaped my eye please tell me! I kind of have a layout for how I want this to go but I will take suggestions, either for characters or the main story line. This will touch on TWS (obviously), AOU, CW, and Infinity War (and Defenders when it comes out, maybe).

* * *

 

Sam had taken them to the VA, the basement was mostly used for storage and would not get many visitors. So, there they were, in the basement of the VA with a woman tied to a chair unconscious. Sam and Steve were living a very fabulous life at the moment.

  
Natasha had offered to go get food of some kind, which kind of scared Steve because Natasha had very interesting and exotic tastes, tastes that Steve did not want to try. Yet, at least. Finally the woman began stirring. Opening her eyes and immediately clenching her jaw in pain. “Sorry ‘bout that, sometimes I just don’t know my own strength” Steve bites out, sass in his tone. She just glares at the pair. Then she scans the room and opens her mouth “Wo ist die rothaarige Dame”.

  
Sam shakes his head in confusion, “more German I presume?”

  
Steve considers her words with a creased brow, “I think she asked about Nat”. He thinks for a second and then stutters out “we-we-weshalb?”

  
Sam just looks at him obviously upset that he doesn’t understand what is going on. Steve just offers “I asked her why she asked”. Sam looks a little better now that it seems Steve will translate. “Dude, I don’t give a shit why she wants to know, mostly because I’m sure it’s unsettling. How do you say ‘getting takeout’ in German?”

  
At that the woman huffs, an amused look on her face. “So, what, you can understand English?” Steve barks, growing annoyed by the second. Just then the woman’s face crinkles in confusing which then looks like panic, “wie spät ist es jetzt?” Sam looks to Steve. “Asking the time” he offers casually. Sam takes out his phone, “eight o’three”. That causes a reaction out of the woman, she struggles out of the duct tape that is keeping her hands to the arms of the chair. Steve perks up, “I’m guessing that wasn’t a good answer”. She looks like she wants to kill them both, very slowly, with her glaring between the two men.

  
“Murder Stare much?” Sam offers to lighten the mood. It doesn’t help. “Saugen meinen Schwanz” is all she says, but Steve doesn’t translate right away. “What’d she say?” he asks, annoyed. Steve huffs out a tired breath, “She said to suck her…” he motions to his groin. Sam laughs a bit. She keeps up the stare and spits out very slowly, “Sie. Verschwenden. Zeit.” Sam’s head pops over to Steve’s, “please tell me she didn’t just say she was gonna rip out my insides and feed them to me”. Steve looks back at him with a small smirk on his face, “She says I’m wasting her time”. She snaps at that because as soon as it’s out of his mouth she snarls, “Nein!” and follows with “Dein eigenes”. Steve looks puzzled at that. Sam presses his gaze so Steve will translate. He continues cautiously, “Okay, not _her_ time, _our_ time?!” The woman nods which makes Sam uncomfortable because she looks almost happy and murdery at the same time.

  
The door behind them opens to Natasha with takeout bags in each hand, “hope you boys are hungry”. They all look to her. Nat notices that their guest is awake and quickly puts the food bags down on a stack of boxes. The woman’s eyes follow her as she moves towards her. “Please tell me you both are really terrible at torturing people”, she blurts out, “She looks the same as when I left”. Steve is the one to speak, “I’m not gonna hurt a lady, Nat”. Sam nods to her in agreement. She looks back to their prisoner, “Fine, I don’t mind hurting ladies”, not even a second later Nat’s fist meets the side of her jaw in a faint crack. Steve and Sam leap forward, Steve grabs Nat, “Woah, hey, no”. Nat laughs, “You both are morons, I hope you know that”. Steve gives Sam a look of confusion, “what, because we won’t hit women?” She laughs again, “She’s wearing a Nano Mask, you idiots”. The woman’s face falls and Nat moves towards her and pulls the thin veil from the woman’s face. She holds up the thin clear material for them. Steve moves closer then, looking upon their captive's face, “I know you”.

 

* * *

 

 

“You, you’re the agent from the elevator. The one that showed me the cctv image. You’re Hydra?” Steve spills out, betrayal apparent, “why would you even bother showing me that photo if you were just going to go and help the guy?” Now he’s yelling, which Natasha seems concerned about. “Fury trusted you and you go and help the guy that murdered him? How. Fucking. Dare. You!” That makes Natasha step between him and the agent, “Hey, while I’m really glad that you just said your first swear word, I think you should calm down”. Steve’s a ball of rage at this point but Sam puts a hand on his shoulder and pulls him away, “Hey, man, relax, take a breath”. Steve calms down a bit, huffing out all this hot air, mostly from Sam’s work voice that is strangely soothing.  
Steve’s shoulders slump, “sorry, I didn’t mean to swear like that, I was just so angry”. Sam laughs, “I could tell, man”. Steve face falls and turns back to the agent. Natasha is standing behind her like a hungry lion watching a gazelle. Steve takes a step forward and then stops in front of her, shoving his hands in his pockets, “Where were you telling him to go?”

  
She lifts her head to make eye contact and bites out a laugh, “Why? So you can go and kill him? Nu-uh, I'm not giving you shit”. She stares still, not her new trademarked Murder Stare, but still unsettling. Steve looks up to Natasha again, still itching for a fight apparently. “You said we were wasting _our_ time. Why?” She looks as though she is choosing her words very carefully, shifting her head from side to side, “Jasper Sitwell should have answered that for ya”. They all look puzzled. “Project Insight? How do you know he told us?” It’s Sam. Of course it’s Sam who says this, he’s just so baffled by his life right now that he is considering that she’ has another one of those mask thingies on and reveal herself to be Jasper Sitwell himself. “I’ve been following you” she directs it towards Steve, “Since our conversation”. Steve's face drops into a frown, “In the elevator?” She nods, “Since you jumped out of that elevator, to the hospital, to the apple store, Camp Lehigh, Sam’s place, to the building that you guys kicked Sitwell off of, even to the over pass”. That makes Sam take a step back, “To my house? How the hell?” She looked to him then and noticed his discomfort, “Not inside, obviously”. His face perks up a bit. “Okay”, Steve interrupts, “So your people are going to put Project Insight into effect” he nods as if he’s trying to get his head straight. She groans, “By ‘my people’ you mean Hydra?” Steve nods. “Honestly, I’m really offended you’d assume that”.

  
They all huff out laughs, “What? So you aren’t Hydra? You just help them?” Steve thinks he needs to cool it on the sass because it makes her look like she wants to slit his throat right there. She groans again, “It’s complicated”. They all laugh at that which makes her agitated. “Look, seriously, running out of time here. If you let me go I’ll help you”. Steve scoffs, “You’ll help? How? Tell all your buddies ‘hey, we aren’t going to take down one of the world’s biggest security agencies today, everyone just go home’”. That pisses her off. “I was thinking more along the lines of planting bombs in the carriers before they activate them and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people”, she rolls her eyes and adds, “Is that okay with you?” Steve gives her props for the sass she adds in that last bit. “And you tell me where he is”. She laughs and rolls her eyes, “I’m not in a bargaining mood right now, sorry”. Steve just shrugs, “Fine. Guess we’ll just leave you here and go bring down Hydra, we might even forget about you, leave you here until we remember how you betrayed someone who put their trust in you like Fury did”. She huffs and tries to free her arms again, to no avail, “Fine. Let me go, we destroy the carriers, and I’ll bring you to him”. Steve smiles, “deal”.


	3. Hail Hydra??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a lot longer than the last one, so yay! SHIELD/Hydra take down time. 
> 
> The next chapter is probably going to take me a little longer to write because of the tricky plot of it, so probably no update tomorrow like you'd probably expect from my chapter posting schedule currently.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated.

* * *

The next morning things seem to flow as usual, except for the fact that Agent Jaimes has a certain trio stalking her every move. That night had ended with her still taped to the chair and the next had started with Sam following her to her apartment and watching her like a hawk, or a falcon… There she did business as usual, shower, eat, get ready, and drive into work. Today meant that the last task ended up being accomplished by Sam. Steve and Natasha were still wanted by SHIELD/Hydra, and not in the loving way. This meant that Sam was their eyes up until entering the Triskelion. Once inside they were blind, but thankfully not deaf due to Steve’s wonderful grandpa idea of performing a three way phone call between him, Sam, and Agent Jaimes. Really, it was a lame plan, but at least they all had unlimited minutes. Once Agent Jaimes had made it to the 30th floor to her desk Steve had chimed in on her Bluetooth.

 

“What are we going to do about Hydra after this? This can’t be all of them, is it?” He sounded as if he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep last night. And he hadn’t.

 

Valerie sat down and logged in to her computer before breathing out a low, “no, it’s not”. Steve sounded less than pleased by that judging by his sharp intake of air. “Look, I only signed up for this mission, I’m not going gallivanting around the world with you three. No, offense but I don’t think I really like you guys all that much”. Sam laughed, he had a nice laugh, soft yet expressive. He took a drink of something, a muffled sipping coming through her earpiece, “No offense taken considering I’m not your number one fan”. She winced. “Did you seriously stop for Starbucks right now?” From the sass that came from that she could immediately tell it had come from Steve. “What? I was thirsty”. Immediately followed by a tsking which probably came from Steve as well.

 

For the first time since the call began Nat piped up, “Well we already have Hydra’s secrets, don’t we? Let’s just expose them”. Valerie stopped her typing, she considered the outcome of releasing such dirty laundry. What would it mean for her? She’d have to leave D.C., maybe even the country to escape the ramifications. Change her name, appearance? “How long would it take to sort through SHIELD’s info and Hydra’s?” Steve asked to no one in particular. Valerie didn’t want this, she needed to shut this idea down, pronto, “Too damn long. We don’t have the time”. Sam speaks up again, “Hah. Coming from someone that would probably lose a lot from doing this, I vote we all forgot she said anything at all”. Natasha seconded it but Steve just blurted out “Just do it all, put it all out there, SHIELD, Hydra, the way I see it they’re one in the same”. She’s gotta give him props for that. SHIELD was so full of snakes it could be likes that movie with the snakes on the plane, she’d never even seen it but she just assumes there were a bunch of motherfucking snakes on that motherfucking plane. Sam chimed in with his agreement. Natasha had paused for a good moment before she agreed as well.

 

“Look, even if I wanted to I couldn’t. In order to declassify information you need two Alpha-level members to authorize it. And I’m stretching when I’m saying that I could probably get Pierce’s authorization, let alone someone else’s”, She immediately thought of Fury, he would have that clearance. Steve must have had the same thought, “If only _someone_ hadn’t killed Fury”, he was mad. Valerie immediately jumped in to defend herself, “hey! I didn’t kill him. Don’t you try to blame me”. This was slowly spiraling into an argument she didn’t want to have. “You may not have been the bullet but you might as well have pulled the trigger”, the way he said it was vicious, it made her pause. She push up from her desk and began walking towards the elevator. She was glad she decided to wear pants today, she just had a feeling this would end in a fight and really didn’t want to try to do that in a dress. The elevator dinged to signal its arrival on her floor which must have caught her listeners’ attention because immediately Steve spat out a quick “Where the hell are you going?” She said nothing. She had nothing to say to him or the others at this moment. Natasha repeated Steve’s question in the same tone. They began yelling into her earpiece to get her to respond. She stood there, in the elevator, staring at the change in number above the doors that indicated the floor, slowly increasing. All she chose to hear was “blah, blah, blah”.

 

After a solid 2 minutes of, what to her was, white noise she finally said, “Would you all kindly shut the fuck up while I’m trying to help you”. They all went silent. Steve was the first to speak up again, “What are you doing?” The doors chimed open and she stepped out, “Just trust me here”. Sam laughs again, which she wasn’t annoyed with, he was a civilian before a couple days ago and he had the realness of it. She admired it. “I don’t think we should” is all he offers. There was a lot of commotion coming from her end which alarmed those on the other end. Radio silence was all they heard for a good five minutes. Steve had voiced his fear that she had ditched her earpiece and terminated the mission. Then, more commotion again. “Hey” she whispered, “I’m back, think I figured out a way to release all that info”. Steve regained his breath, “How?!” He was way too eager at this point which startled her. She took a breath, “Think I found and Alpha-level member with a little help from Hill. She’s going to get him here and plant the explosives of the carriers. Meanwhile, I’m going to go steal a gun or two and find the STRIKE team”. They all perked up a “what?!” Steve added the “why?”

 

As she got back onto the lift she continued, “STRIKE is Hydra, I’m gonna take them out because the first thing Pierce will do once I pull a gun on him and betray Hydra he’s going to try to get them up to his office”. Steve sort of laughed? Did he think her plan was too simple? Straight forward? Not assessing all possible outcomes? “Good point”. Did he just compliment her on her strategy? Captain America: expert World War II strategist applauds Hydra agent on her strategy. She’d like a medal, just to make it official. “Maria will text me once she placed the explosives. Then I pull the gun on Pierce, Maria meets me up there and wait for Mr. Alpha-level to arrive, I’ll start the order to declassify all the intel, and finally share all Hydra and SHIELD’s dirty secrets to everyone on the interwebs”. Sam and Natasha voice their approval a few seconds after wrapping their heads around the plan, Steve however, just asks, “I thought we were putting it on the internet, not the interwebs…?” Nat and Sam laughed their fucking asses off she assumes from the cackling. “They’re the same thing, Idiot” is all she offers. “Oh” is his only reply, which, sounds very sheepish.

 

She had made her way down to the shooting range and had accomplished her first task. “How did you just steal guns from SHIELD?” She was the one laughing this time, she replied in a sultry voice, “I’m very good with my hands, Captain”. Steve made a very loud choking noise over the phone, you could hear Natasha hitting his back while laughing. At that point she switched topics, “Okay, I’m going to go track down Rumlow and his guys, I’ll probably be silent for a bit”. They trio express their acknowledgement with grunts. Agent Jaimes pull her phone out of her back pocket and goes to her messages.

 **Me:** Are you with the guys?

 **Brock:** No. Why?

 **Me:** Can I come see you? ;)

 **Brock:** Sorry, I’m still out looking for our guy

 **Me:** Are the guys here or the bank?

 **Brock:** There. Why?

 **Me:** I think I have a lead for them on Cap and Widow. Do you know where they’d be?

 **Brock:** Pierce will be happy to grab them, check the coffee cart on floor 17

 **Me:** Thanks. See you later then? ;)

 **Brock:** Definitely

 

The whole exchange ended up taking a good 20 minutes because Rumlow was out in the field but now she had an idea of where they were. “I think I found them, Brock isn’t here though”. Steve stirs, “Brock, huh…” Shit. “Rumlow, whatever we’re calling him, he’s out in the field” she squeaks out quickly to save her skin, “he’s just one guy though, and it’s not like Pierce could get him here in time”. Steve huffs in acceptance, “okay”. Valerie finds the STRIKE team right where Rumlow had said to look. Rollins had eyed her approaching and immediately straightened his posture from where he leaned on the cart. “Well deserved coffee break I’m assuming” she smiles. Jack Rollins had always been less of a man than Rumlow. Yes, we was just as tough, but much weaker to a sweet smile. That is why he seemed to choke a bit on his coffee when her lips curled up. “Uh, y-yeah” he stuttered out. She supplied a simple nod to the rest of the team before speaking, “I have some pertinent information for you”, and her smile is back, “pertaining to one Rogers, Steven Grant and his female companion”. That elicited a scoff from Natasha in her ear. Jack looks down to his coffee cup then back to her, he clears his throat as he says “is that so?” She’s got him wrapped around her little finger already, “thought we could all chat in private”. His eyebrows perk up at that, “all of us? I mean, I think I could relay the message for ya”, he winks not so slyly. She fakes a smile and looks down at her shoes then comes back up, looking at him through her lashes, “Well, um, that sounds..” her smile grows, “This is really urgent, however, maybe sometime in the very near future…” she bites her lip and gives him a good once over, then to the other guys around him and leans up closer to his ear and says in a low voice, “I could acquaint myself with not so little Jackie”. Steve and Sam are both choking now, Sam sounding like he just spit out a good mouth full of his fancy coffee. Rollins reacts very well to that by just nodding, his voice cracks a bit when he tells the rest of the boys “Wh-why don’t we show the Lady to the locker room, boys”. Jack ushers her to the elevator.

 

The locker room the STRIKE team used on location was in the back of the building on the second floor. It was secluded enough, thank god. They entered before her to ensure they were alone and then guided her in. In a span of about 4 seconds the only thing that came through their phone call was the sound of 5 quick shots. Then 5 loud thuds. Steve speaks up, “Did you just flirt with him and then kill him?” Nat laughs at that, a sign of approval? Valerie settles, “I thought you’d rather I kill them, you know, since they’re Hydra?!” Steve mutters something along the lines of “couldn’t have just shot them in the legs or something”. She groans, “No”, silence, “Look, I’m going to head up to Pierce now, no word from Maria yet, but hopefully soon”. There’s still silence and for a moment Valerie thinks they got disconnected, then Sam asks, “How you planning to stall him?” Honestly, she figured she’d wing it. Maybe use the Cap info and BS it a bit, “I got a plan”, she says instead. Steve hisses, “Care to enlighten us then?” She panics for a second before she blurts out “Bullshit”. “What?” is all he gets out. Sam voices his opinion, “That sounds like a terrible plan”. She is finally the one to laugh when she says “It’s the only one we’ve got so I’ll make due”.

 

* * *

 

 

When she reaches Pierce’s office he is meeting with the Security Council, or rather their holograms. She knocks on the glass door gingerly. His head turns and she offers a welcoming smile. He excuses himself from the council while he goes to see what she needs. “Is this urgent? I’m kind of in the middle of something” he smiles back warmly. She turns her smile more serious as she says, “We’ve located Captain Rogers and Miss Romanoff”. His face immediately falls and returns back to the Security Council and announces that “something has come up” and within a minute they were all gone. He returns back to the door where she stands sheepishly inside. “Come, please sit” he ushers her to his desk. They sit opposite each other, “so please update me on the situation”. She speaks lowly, “We managed to catch a glimpse of Captain Rogers on a cctv cam downtown, it took us a while to follow his movements but-“ her phone buzzes. It’s Maria, the charges are set and Mr. Alpha-level is close, she is on her way up. He gathers her attention back to him. “More updates?” he asked curiously.

 

“Yes” she needed to stall him just a little longer, she needed back up, “We tracked them to a residential lot and that was just a message that they discovered the tenant’s name”. He brings his hands together, “What is their name?” She kind of regrets it after but it just falls out, “A Samuel Thomas Wilson, sir”. Sam immediately speaks up, “What the fuck kinda… I swear to all that is Holy if you have just put my head on a chopping block I will kill you myself. Also did you research me?!” Pierce looks happy. He places his hands flat on the desk, “and have you passed this along to the STRIKE team?” What’s she supposed to say? She tells the truth, “no, sir”. He looks bewildered by her answer, he grumbles, “and why the hell not?”

 

Maria. Coming down the hall, thank god. She stands up from the chair and Pierce looks alarmed. “Because they’re dead” she quickly grabs the gun stashed in the small of her back and trains it to him. Pierce looks upset, “Oh, Agent Jaimes, why’d you go and do that”. Maria barges in, gun in hand and pointed at Pierce. “Good to see you, Maria” she sighs in relief. Hill glances at her, “wish it were under better circumstances”. Valerie guides Pierce away from his desk with the barrel of her gun. He shuffles away with his hands raised. Agent Hill moves along with him into the middle of the room. Valerie places the gun onto the desk and addresses the voices in her ear, “Hey, guys, I’m starting the declassification protocol now”. “Thank goodness”, Steve lets out a sigh of relief, “how long will that take?” Valerie looks up to Maria who still has her gun on Pierce, “Give or take 30 minutes. Maria, how long did you set those timers for?” She looks up at her and they meet eyes, “30 minutes, just like you said”. She returns back to the computer screen, “great, let’s hope I can get this quickly”. Pierce speaks up, challenging, “Declassification of intel requires two Alpha-level-“. “Company’s coming” she interrupts. Sam squawks, “Hey, I think your one guy is here”. Valerie looks out to the helicopter pad right outside the room, its empty, “why do you say that?” She hears another weird noise, “Copter is circling above the place like a vulture”.

 

Not a second later is the helicopter slowly landing outside. “Okay guys, I’m gonna let you go now, everything is under control”, she quickly presses the end call button on the ear piece. “Retro”, Maria offers as Valerie takes out her Bluetooth and places it on the desk. Valerie just smiles to herself. Then he’s there, in the room. Nick Fury, alive and breathing, still as dramatic as ever with his long coat. Maria nods and thanks him for coming. Fury eyes Pierce as he walks towards the computer and its current operator. “Jaimes, good work”, he nods approvingly. She smiles a fond smile, “It’s an honor, Sir. Thank you for trusting me”.

 

Valerie finished the Declassification and nods for Maria to usher Pierce over for his retinal scan. With Pierce’s authorized he manages to say, “the first thing I did was delete your retinal authorization”. Then Fury goes and makes this dramatic moment by saying something like “you need to keep both eyes open” and flips his eye patch up. Fury’s retinal scan is authorized and the intel is out. Valerie’s pocket buzzes, it a text from Nat.

 **Nat:** Good work, it’s trending!

 

A minute or so later there is a loud boom which startles Pierce. Maria looks at his confused face, “No more Project Insight”. That’s when Pierce tries to make a run for it, dashing towards the desk to try to escape. Fury grabs Valerie’s discarded gun on the desk and shoots him in the chest, sending him through the glass. The three of them walk over to the mess. Pierce looks up at them as he bleeds. He looks Valerie right in the eyes as he lets out his final breath, “Hail. Hydra”. She turns away as his head slumps to the side, lifeless.


	4. You Bulking Up??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably would've had this up earlier but I've been very upset lately with the result of the Presidential Election, it just really drained me that people could elect a racist, sexist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic person to be our President.   
> Anyway, I wrote this a little longer than usual and a little lighter near the end to try to make up for that shit show of an election. I laughed a few times while writing this so it was good for me.  
> Again, there is other languages in this chapter, the only one's that will probably be seen in this fic is french, german, and russian but I don't know if I will include all of those. The german in this chapter is pre-translated. I hope you guys like it.

* * *

 

Agent Jaimes had agreed to take Steve to the man that killed Fury, they had a deal. Sam just wanted to go home and sleep for a month straight because all this bullshit that happened in his life was too damn much for him right now. Natasha had tried to tag along with Steve “as backup” just in case the man tried to kill them again, but, Steve had told her to stay at her apartment. Valerie had heard him whisper to her that he hadn’t planned on him getting that far.

 

Valerie insisted on them walking, it was dark out already though, so Steve didn’t really understand why she would feel safe walking on the streets at night, maybe because Captain America was with her. He wasn’t sure though, and he really didn’t want to ask her. That was because he didn’t trust her, even that she wasn’t leading him into some sort of trap or just on a wild goose chase around D.C. They had been walking for at least an hour from when they left Steve’s apartment when she stopped. She walked up to the dark building and he followed. Valerie reached into her pocket slowly, Steve watched her carefully, and if she pulled out a weapon he’d be ready. Out from her pocket she pulled out a ring of keys. Steve relaxed then. She opened the front door and ushered him in. As they walk up a flight of stairs Steve decides to finally say something, “Where are we?”

 

She turns to him, “This is where I live”. It was dark and stuffy in the stairway, Steve couldn’t imagine someone living here, except maybe squatters. He just nods, he isn’t looking to offend her. She stops on the second floor. This warehouse definitely didn’t seem like a place someone that looked like her would live. By that he just meant put together, when he first met her that day in the elevator her hair was perfectly curled, her lipstick a bright shade of red, her white blouse and her tan flowy skirt were all very put together, he didn’t really get it. She stopped at a door, the only door on the floor. The industrial metal of it making him feel cold. He stood next to her outside the door, she turned to him, “Stay here. I’ll come get you in a second”. He reacts immediately, “What?! No. I’m going in with you right now!” it comes out worse than he meant it. She just stares at him, “Just be thankful you’re even here right now. I promised I’d bring you to him, I think you can wait one more second” she bites back. So, he listens and takes a step back from the door and leans against the wall. She knocks on the door, three short, one long, one short, one long, two short, one short, one long. Only after she does it does he realize it was probably morse code. She unlocks the door and slides through, shutting it after her.

 

Steve waits there eagerly for a couple minutes before the door opens and she comes back out. “Come on then”, she waves him over. It is dark when they enter, he regrets leaving his shield at his apartment and keeps his guard up as she guides him through the makeshift living space. They stop, there’s a window, a couch, and a figure. The man is sitting there on the couch in the dark, the only light coming from a red bar sign across the street. It’s almost symbolic, the red that engulfs the man, all the blood he’s shed. Steve is angry thinking of Fury again. Valerie turns to him and put her hand out trying to calm him. She walks over to the killer and touches his masked face, then pulls his hair up and away from his face, tying it up. Steve doesn’t think he deserves the gentleness she is using on him. The man looks past her and right at Steve, almost afraid. Steve’s anger falters for a moment but sparks back up as he reminds himself of who this man is. And that’s- his friend?! He hadn’t realized she had taken off the half mask he wore, only to reveal Bucky. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does Bucky. Steve can feel the tears start to well up in his eyes, Valerie does too because she ushers Bucky into another room. When she comes back to him Steve comes back from his thoughts, letting the tears roll down his face. “I know him”, is all he gets out. She puts her hand on his shoulder and simply says, “I know”.

 

* * *

 

 

“You know?” he asks as he wipes the tears from his cheeks. She removes her hand from his shoulder and gets him to sit down on the couch. She doesn’t look at him, “I was his handler, what Rumlow was”, she looks to see his reaction to that, it isn’t good, “In 2011 we were in LA on a mission, you had just woken up, your picture was on the front page of every paper. He saw you and he… he became erratic, kept saying your name over and over, and it wasn’t the first time. When he gets like that we’re supposed to bring him back to the lab so that he doesn’t hurt himself, I calmed him down though and we went through with the mission. When we got back they found out what I did- or rather didn’t do. They made me watch”. He just looks at her, “Made you watch?” She looks sad for him, “As they wiped him”, she tries to say this as gently as possible, “He doesn’t remember you, and they wouldn’t let him”. Steve looks sad, all the anger he had coming into this has completely left him.

 

He just sits there, slumped forward. “You should go, now”. His head perks up, “What?! I’m not leaving him!” She quickly looks annoyed, “Look, be glad I even let you see him at all-”. “You know who he is to me and you really expect me to leave?!” he interrupts. She relaxes and speaks calmly, “He’s not safe, they’re looking for him. Why do you think I was so alarmed the other day when Sam told me how late it was? Why do you think Rumlow wasn’t there today? They need him back”. Steve turns to her, “Well I’ll protect him, I won’t let them take him”. He moves on the couch, antsy. “That won’t help, if they find him, he’ll go with them. No matter how much he remembers, he will go with them”.

 

That doesn’t ease Steve one bit, he doesn’t understand. “All they have to do is say ten words to him and it won’t matter if he remembers you or not, as soon as they say them he is the winter soldier and he will kill whoever they ask him to, including you”. That hurts his heart, hearing that his best friend, that doesn’t even know him, would kill him without question after hearing just ten words. “What are they? The words”. She shakes her head, “I know you wouldn’t use them against him but, I don’t think I should tell you”. He looks a little hurt by that, by her distrust, but he can’t blame her too much because he doesn’t necessarily trust her either. “So, what? He’ll just stay here forever?! I won’t let you keep him here” his anger is back, but directed towards her.

 

“Not forever. He listens to me, he thinks I’m still his handler, I think maybe I can get them out”, she looks at him, hoping that eased his anger and frustration a bit. He stands up, his hands on his hips, “Then I’ll be here then”. She shakes her head again, “No, if he remembers you, if he remembers who he is… I need the winter soldier in order to get rid of those words, I won’t do that to the man you know. I’ve done it to James plenty of times before, I can do it to him, but not Bucky Barnes”. His hands fall from his hips as he asks, “James?” She stands, “That’s who he was when he wasn’t under those words”. Steve paces her living room, “I’m not just going to leave him, I can’t, not after I just got him back”. Valerie walks over to the kitchen area and flicks on the main lights. The living space looks normal, like someone just made a warehouse into a loft. She opens a drawer in the kitchen, a notepad and pen. She is writing, Steve doesn’t know what though so he just stands there and stares. After a while she rips the small page from the notepad and walks over to him, “Take this and go to the store down the street, get everything and you can stay”. He stands there confused as he looks at the note, “Brown hair dye? What do you need that for?” She chuckles as she picks up her key ring from the kitchen counter, “It’s for you. If you want to stay you can’t look like you, can’t trigger him into remembering you”, she takes off the key she used to get into the warehouse and places it in Steve’s empty hand, “While you’re out think of something for me to call you, not Steve though”. He looks at the key in his hand. Does she seriously trust him enough to give him the key to her apartment? Loft? Warehouse? He doesn’t know. He admires her for giving him this trust though, “Okay”. As he goes to leave she stops him, “If you don’t know where to find anything just ask someone, okay?” He nods and leaves. Now that they are alone she goes into the room she shepherded Bucky into earlier, he sits there, on the edge of the bed. His bun messy and rushed from earlier, his stubble almost too stublely. She sits next to him but he doesn’t move, only lifts his head. She rests her hand on his thigh, “James?”, she questions.  He speaks back to her in german, <”Who is James?”> She frowns, he doesn’t understand what has happened, the man he was supposed to kill was just in front of him and she had told him not to kill him, that it was a test. She removes her hand, <”No one. That man, he was your mission, now he isn’t, he is on our side, Soldier. It was just a test, like I told you earlier. It was a test and you passed”>. He doesn’t make eye contact, <”I did?”> She keeps her voice firm, <”Yes, Soldier. But now you need to stand down. You will not hurt him, do you understand me?”> The man next to her simply nods in compliance. <”Good, now it is time that you bathe”>.

 

Steve returns about an hour later with everything on the list, he unpacks the bags onto her counter to show her. She nods in approval. He points to the huge tub of protein powder that she insisted on him buying the largest package, “You bulking up?” He says it sarcastically and it makes her chuckle. “It’s for him, they fed him rarely through an IV, he’s malnourished, this will help with his liquid only diet”. Steve flinches at her statement, “Liquid only? He should be eating actual food”. She can sense his distress, “He isn’t used to solid foods, it won’t agree with him well, I’m not saying liquids for the rest of his life, but he needs to grow to solids”. Steve nods. She takes the stack of clothes she instructed him to get and moves to go to her bedroom. “I didn’t know what size he would be so I just got around me size”, he says before she leaves. She nods and leaves him by himself.

 

He is sitting in the same spot as before, only wearing a towel with damp hair pulled back into a better put together bun than earlier. <”Up”> she instructs him. He stands up. She moves towards him and places the clothes on the edge of the bed, then removes the towel from his waist. In the pile on the bed she grabs a pair of boxers from the stack. She puts them near his feet and one by one asks him to lift a foot to step into them, then pulls them up around his hips, a little small but still baggy enough to not be constricting. She takes a pair of black sweatpants and they do the same thing, only a little bit baggy. The only thing left was a shirt and she pulled a plain grey one from the few Steve picked up, instructed him to lift his arms and slid it over his head. After, she placed the rest of the clothes on top of her white dresser. <”Lay down”>, a command in every sense of the word. He laid down in the bed and she placed a throw blanket over him, <”Now close your eyes and go to sleep, Soldier”>. He listened, she turned off the lamp next to her bed and went back out into the common area.

 

Steve was still at the counter, reading the directions inside the hair dye package, he had this confused look on his face. “Whatcha doin’?” she asks inquisitively. His head pops up, “I’ve never dyed my hair before, I don’t really know how”. She huffs out a small chuckle. _Of course he hasn’t_. “Bring it here, I’ll help”, he grabs the instructions and the box and walks over to her, “We should do this in the bathroom”. Steve follows behind her as she turns on the bathroom light, Bucky’s- The Winter Soldier’s – clothes still in a pile on the floor. Steve just looks at them. “I thought he could use a bath”, she says in response to his silence. Steve nods. She pats the toilet seat, “Come sit”. He walks over and sits on the lid. Valerie pulls out the bottles and the gloves and mixes the liquids without even looking at the instructions. “Do you know what you’re doing?”, Steve questions with a somewhat scared look on his face. She simply smiles, “Yes, I’ve done this plenty of times, don’t worry”. She mixes the hair dye and puts the gloves on, shakes the bottle vigorously and then stands next to him, “This is gonna be cold”. He scoffs, “I was frozen for seventy years, I think I can handle a little chill”. She shrugs and starts applying the dye. Steve flinches once she does. “Told ya it’d be cold” she says with a shit-eating grin. Steve just glares at her.

 

“So”, she begins, “What am I gonna be calling you for the next couple months?” Steve looks up to meet her eyes, “I forgot, sorry”. She tsks, “Okay, well I’ll help. I suggest you stick with something you can remember, it’s easier that way”. Steve is silent in thought for a long while. “Earth to Steve, you still there?” That stirs him from his thought, “I can’t really think of anything”. She stops and steps back, “You are hopeless. Let me think”, she returns to spreading the dye through his hair, “Sam? No, obviously. Bob? No, weird. Oh here, how ‘bout Roger? It’s familiar to you and different but still a normal name. Roger Grant?!” Steve laughs at that, “You know my middle name?” She looks insulted by Steve’s question, “Of course I do, I went to that exhibit a couple times”. He laughs again at that, “Okay, Roger Grant then, what’s my back story then? Was I a city boy? Born and raised in south Detroit?” She laughs now, “Look at you, making references and everything. No, unfortunately, you are a simple Hydra grunt”. His playful smile softens, “What?” Valerie looks down to him, meeting his eyes, “I told him that all this was a test, the trying to kill you part. Told him you were just part of the test seeing if he would follow Pierce’s direction completely”. Steve nods, “I never thought I’d see the day where I’d be a Hydra grunt. Always thought I’d die before joining them”. His face slumps. She finishes with the dye and removes the gloves, “It’s just a role you’re playing, and that that big of one. You can still be you. Kinda”. His mouth curves into a small smile at that. “Now get up, we have to leave that in for 30-40 minutes, we might as well get more comfortable and get something to eat, and I’m thinking pizza”.


	5. Where were you??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this took a while, my Grandma has been in the hospital a lot so I've been away seeing her, chapters will probably not have a strict schedule for a while so.  
> This chapter we learn more about the person Steve and Bucky have been spending their time with and, if you look really hard, foreshadowing into the very distant future with the 'offending' convo between her and Steve. If you guess it right you will earn my internal love.

* * *

 

It had been three months since Steve had made the decision to stay. Over those three months he never even spoke to Bucky, not that he could, it was only the Winter Soldier and James on the rare occasion. Valerie had insisted that Steve call her Veda for some reason he didn’t ask. He assumed it was her alias before the one she had acquired for her infiltration of SHIELD. Nat had moved back to New York after SHIELD fell, she didn’t have anything else left in D.C. for her. Kate/Sharon joined the CIA to Steve’s knowledge. Maria took a position at Stark Industries. Sam stayed at the VA in D.C. but rarely saw Steve due to his dedication to staying around for his resurrected best friend. Steve felt it best to not say anything to Nat or Sam given their first impressions of this person he had known as Bucky.

 

Steve felt bad about his deteriorating relationship with Sam and had promised to get together soon, soon being very ambiguous. Veda had begun rifling through the newly acquired Hydra information for more information on the Winter Soldier words, all she had learned was that they had been burned into his mind by a man named Johann Fennhoff. She had tried doing a quick search through all the information for his name but nothing had come of it, so she assumed Hydra had made him a ghost in their digital footprint or only had him on paper somewhere. Both were not helpful at the moment.

 

Over the last couple of months though it had been interesting. Steve refused to go back to his apartment except to pack a bag of clothes for the upcoming week, he had slept on the couch for three months and Veda swears he is a glutton for punishment because there is no way that is comfortable. Bucky and Veda share her bed, which pings jealousy into Steve which he tries to dismiss, Veda told him it was to make him feel comfortable and for her to keep an eye on him.

 

Steve did the grocery shopping with the help of a list from Veda and usually a nice employee at the store. Protein powder had been on it for the first two and a half months, Steve’s heart left his body when Veda had told him that Hydra only fed him through an IV not as much as they should had. Solids had not been allowed in Bucky’s diet yet, they had moved onto soups and mushy stews. The Winter Soldier didn’t complain though, he knew better than to, James however, when he came out would. Steve felt awkward around him, he didn’t know what to say or how to act, James wasn’t like The Winter soldier, he was more human but not one he knew. Sometimes Veda would see how uncomfortable he felt and took him in the other room where she said those ten little words that turned him back into The Winter Soldier again. Steve felt bad about that though, James was someone that Veda knew and liked, he felt very selfish.

 

Today was one of those days. James had made an appearance right when waking up. Veda and Steve were early risers, James, not so much. Steve enjoyed it though, it reminded him of Bucky, he had never been a morning person. James strolls out of the bedroom to find the both of them on the couch watching the news, Steve with a piping hot cup of tea and Veda with a cup of coffee. As soon as she sees him she stops drinking her coffee and looks straight to Steve to catch his reaction. He doesn’t do anything though, no change in expression, nothing. Odd.

 

<”Is there more coffee?”>, James asks in a quiet voice. That gets Steve to look at him. James never just spoke so freely like that. James was more of the strong silent type, a huge change from Bucky, Bucky could never shut up. Steve assumed he never spoke because of the torture he must’ve gone through.

 

Veda just turns her attention back to the news and answers, <”In the pot on the counter, mugs are in the cabinet above”>. Steve immediately though about how he should really brush up on his German. James then made his way over and poured himself a cup, then made his way over to them and took a seat in Veda’s white barrel chair, resting his feet casually on the ottoman. Now this was odd. Steve stared at him, not even trying to be inconspicuous. Veda just stared back at him, silently telling him to stop staring before he noticed.

 

Veda managed to get him to focus back on the news and that’s when she addressed him, “James?” She didn’t even bother continuing with German. He tore his gaze from the tv and over to her, deciding not to answer. “You should speak English here, it’ll keep you sharp”. He just nodded and then returned back to the tv, sipping his coffee. She looked back to Steve who was looking especially interested in the news about some scandal about a congressman, obviously he was just faking his attentiveness in order to not make things worse. They probably sat there for an hour at least, in complete silence. Steve was the first to get up thankfully. He ended up grabbing his key and coat and saying “I’ll be back later”. Veda would soon find out that later meant 9pm. She spent the next 8 hours with James, talking with her friend that she rarely got to see lately because of Steve’s uneasiness of him. She didn’t blame him, that’s why she got rid of him every other time.

 

At around 1pm, when Veda starting fixing him some potato soup did he ask, “Why do you keep getting rid of me?” She really didn’t expect him to ask her that, she just figured maybe he didn’t remember, but apparently he does. She stopped stirring the soup on the stove and turned to him, seated at the island.

 

“Roger isn’t like me, he just believes that you shouldn’t be in control right now-” she starts but he cuts her off, “But I’m not on a mission right now… right?!” He needs reassurance. “No, you aren’t, he just- Hydra would prefer you ready. Roger isn’t a bad guy, he’s just following orders”. James nods his head even though he looks as though he doesn’t actually understand.

 

James eats his soup and they watch Inception, a movie that James really doesn’t understand all that much but enjoys the action scenes. Veda tells him it was a fan favorite and won some awards, he agrees it was good but admits his confusion. That leads to Veda explaining, in depth, what happened and why over dinner. After dinner and their discussion she decides he needs to go before Steve gets back.

 

“I’m sorry, but you should probably be gone by the time Roger gets home”, she says with a sad smile. He agrees and she takes him into her room, says the words, puts him to bed, and then goes back into the living room and waits for Steve.

 

* * *

 

 

Nine o’clock comes and Steve walks into the loft, dark, only lit by the muted tv. He sees Veda’s figure on the couch and she quickly looks over to him. He walks over to her, sitting down on the couch next to her. “Where were you?” She sounds like his wife, wondering if he has been cheating on her.

 

“Just out” is all he decides to offer.

 

She sighs, “You didn’t need to leave. I would’ve done it if you had asked”.

 

He wipes at his face, as if he hasn’t slept in a few days, “You shouldn’t have to, you guys are friends and I feel selfish for not allowing you to hang out together for more than an hour because I’m an idiot”.

 

She turns on the couch to face him.

 

“I just don’t know what to say to him, he isn’t my Bucky- I mean, the Bucky I knew, he doesn’t know me”, he just starts spilling out and only stops once his throat gets dry.

 

She puts a hand on his knee, “Look, I get it, I can’t even begin to imagine how it must’ve felt to lose someone that you love like that, but-”

 

“You must have lost someone” he asks her.

 

Veda retracts her hand and swallows hard, “When I was…” she hesitates, “When I was six I lost my brother and my parents” she pauses, Steve cuts in, “How?” She thinks about whether or not she should continue, but after Steve gives her a small smile she continues, “Every year, on Christmas Eve, we’d drive to Berlin to go see The Nutcracker. On our way home that year… we were in an accident, I blacked out. When I woke up, I wasn’t in the car anymore, my Mother was next to me, my Brother next to her, and my Dad next to him. They killed my Dad first, he begged them to let us go. Next, my Brother. My Mom and I were crying, and then they killed her too. Then they left”.

 

“What? Why? Who would do that? Orphan a six year old girl like that”, asks with a sad look on his face.

 

Veda’s eyes glance over to her bedroom door.

 

Steve retracts a bit, “Bucky? He… he-?”

 

Veda interjects, “No. He wasn’t Bucky, he wasn’t even James then, he was The Winter Soldier”.

 

He just stares at her before looking to his hands in his lap, “Why did you join Hydra then?”

 

“Because I was gonna kill him” her voice suddenly sounding vicious, “I was gonna make him pay”.

 

“But, he’s here?” He’s confused now, a stupidly curious look on his face.

 

She doesn’t continue yet, she just looks forward, “Once I worked my way up a bit, I got the position of his handler” Steve looks confused by that, “What Brock was…” Steve makes a disgusted face at the mention of him, “I saw how young he looked and figured it couldn’t have been the same guy, so”.

 

“So, you befriended him?” It’s accusing, like her actions singlehandedly caused every bad thing that happened in the world.

 

She sighed, “I didn’t know what to do, the last 13 years of my life were spent planning this guy’s death who I had figured had been dead. I didn’t know what to do, okay. Anyways, my loss and yours aren’t the same”.

 

Steve laughs a bit, “Yeah, yours is a whole hell of a lot worse than mine. I might have lost my family and Bucky but they weren’t murdered”.

 

“I guess, but losing a lover must have been hard”, She says and Steve chokes a bit.

 

“What?”

 

She looks at him, his aghast expression, “I mean I know he isn’t technically dead anymore, but at the time-”

 

“No, we weren’t, no”, his throat goes dry again.

 

She laughs, “It’s fine, I don’t mind”, she carefully pats his shoulder.

 

He repositions himself on the couch a bit, “We weren’t…”

 

Veda offers him a small smile, “You never told him how you felt?” He looks up to her quickly, “What, no? I didn’t...” Her smile grows a bit, “Is this development more recent then?”

 

He looks scandalized, “No, I don’t… I’ve never…”

 

Her hand returns to his knee, “Look, you must know that Fury bugged your apartment…”, Steve looked confused as if wondering how this relates, “Who do you think listened to them?”

 

Steve faltered, a blush forming down his face and neck. Physically he couldn’t speak. “When it got really intimate I tried not to listen. I mean at first it would just be the nightmares but then the moaning and-”

 

The light blush turned him tomato red now, Steve went back to those nights in his head, the nights he dreamed of Bucky, before he left, when they were at the World Expo mostly. He’d wake up screaming his name and couldn’t fall back to sleep, he usually ended up crying for a few hours and then jerking off to the memory of Bucky, which he always felt guilty about. Knowing that someone was listening to him just made it worse. Veda pulled him out of his thoughts when she said, “I’m not judging you or anything, I mean I just felt bad for you, it was hard listening to it, after the first time I tried not to listen once you would start crying”.

 

Steve’s eyes had gotten watery thinking back to his nights in his apartment alone, how pathetic he must have sounded, crying and jerking off to a ghost.

 

“When he remembers you I think you should tell him”, she offers.

 

He looks upset by that, he steels out a hard “No”. His jaw clenches and he changes the subject, “Why do you always call him Brock?”

 

She looks at him in disapproval of his avoidance, she answers him though, “We were fucking, he thought it was weird if I called him Rumlow”.

 

Steve’s eyebrows perk up at her terminology, “That makes it sounds dirty, I don’t understand why people say that”.

 

Veda lightens the mood with a smile, “That’s what it was, the guy was an asshole, I was just using him to get what I needed”.

 

“I don’t necessarily think sex is a need, more of a desire”, he shares.

 

She looks at him and nods in agreement, “That isn’t what I meant. I was only fucking him to keep tabs on James”.

 

That looks like it just confuses Steve even more.

 

“Are you a virgin, Steve?” She asks as if she is asking how his day was.

 

He chokes in response, “What? Pssh, no”. He doesn’t sound convincing though.

 

“Look, people nowadays, sex isn’t a big deal, people fuck their friends to avoid romance and relationships, people don’t have sex at all, and some people fuck people to get things, usually it’s referred to as Sugar Daddy-ism or something like that but, no one really gives a fuck about why you fuck or who”, she breathes out, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

 

He looks slightly offended by what she just said, mostly due to all her swearing. He decides to change the subject again because he really doesn’t want to have to hear her say ‘fuck’ again, “Have you found anything else in those files about how to get those words out?”

 

“No. I tried doing a quick search through all the info for his name, it took a day and no results. I’m assuming Hydra just didn’t use his real name or has a file on the process as a hard copy only”, she breathes out.

 

Steve’s brow furrows, “What?”

 

She sighs, “So, sometimes Hydra likes to do this thing I like to call ghosting, where they don’t refer to a certain person by their name in their files to protect them against what I’m doing now, or they never had any file or notes including them digitally, only paper, which could be in any Hydra base. Either way it is not good news, I’ll have to go through the info myself and try to find any trace about who this guy might have been and what he did to James”.

 

“Okay, and how long will that take?”

 

Veda gives him scowl, “To go through all of it, a year if I work efficiently enough. If it isn’t digital though, we’ll need to go searching through Hydra bases though, that would probably take like 6 months max”.

 

Steve sighs. _This is going to take a while_.


	6. Steve??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, this one took a while. My Grandma is doing a lot better so posting will be more frequent. Things are happening in the next chapter :)
> 
> Thank you all for reading.

* * *

 

In the following four months a lot of progress was made, Veda had found the notes that described the hypnotization of “The Asset” back in the 60s by a Doctor Fautus. Using that information she quick searched using the Doctor’s name and came across more instances of this hypnotization in the next couple of years to others. There were others, like The Winter Soldier. Not only was this terrible, knowing that there are or were more Assets running around, Veda didn’t have a clue as to how to go about dehypnotizing him.

 

Steve always looked so tired these days, between the couch sleeping and his distance from his friends was obviously taking a toll on him. Veda always told him to go take a vacation or go see the other Avengers, or even Sam, but he always insisted that he wanted to be here for Bucky. He always said his name so carefully, like he knew that Bucky wasn’t necessarily there but that’s who he was here for, not James.

 

Veda had begun looking into hypnotherapy and how it worked. Eventually she met with a hypnotist and discussed the process of hypnotizing someone.

 

“Hey, can I hypnotize you?” Veda asks as Steve strolls into the loft.

 

Steve shuts the door with a crinkle in his brow, “What? No”. He walked over to the couch to join her, “Where is he?”

 

She took her eyes of the news for a moment while she answered, “He’s sleeping”.

 

“He sure does sleep a lot” he adds, wearily before sitting down and putting his feet up on the coffee table.

 

She stares at his feet on the table and then glances up to him with an “I will murder you if you do not remove your feet from my table right now”. He quickly removes them and gives her an apologetic look. “Technically they didn’t let him actually sleep. If he did it was only 2 hours at most, the rest was cryo. I’m just trying to let him get his bearings”.

 

“Are you talking about James or…?” he questions, now focused on the news story on tv.

 

She glances at him, “He isn’t James right now, if that’s what you meant”. Steve shrugs and goes silent.

 

They do not talk for the rest of the evening.

 

* * *

 

 

The next morning Steve wakes up feeling eyes on him. As he perks up he finds James- The Winter Soldier?- staring at him from behind the couch. He has a mug of coffee in his hands and his hair is all over the place. Steve sits up all the way and pulls his discarded shirt from last night on. He reached over to the coffee table to check the time on his phone, 4:27am. Not even he woke up this early.

 

James walked back around the corner and sat in the white chair, staring at Steve.

 

After a few minutes of just having the guy stare at him whilst drinking his coffee he decided to finally speak to him, “Is there more coffee?”

 

The dark shadowy figure in the chair just nodded. So Steve stood up and walked over to the coffee pot in nothing but his t-shirt and boxers, which Steve felt awkward about but it didn’t seem to bother James. A minute later he returned to the couch and flipped the blanket from that night over his lap as he sat.

 

He just kept staring at him. Steve thought that at any moment he would decide to get up and just stab him or something, judging by the way he looked at him. It was awkward, like having one of your friends leaving you in a room alone with one of their friends. Steve literally looked anywhere but at James.

 

* * *

 

 

Veda woke up that morning to an empty bed. She startled and scanned the dark room. It was quiet though. She quietly got out of bed and put her robe on, tying it in the front as she grabbed one of her knives from her dresser drawer. She slowly opened the door of her bedroom and crept down the short hallway to the main room. She saw James’ head in the chair first, which alarmed her. She continued cautiously only to make eye contact with Steve, sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee. She stilled. James turned around and made eye contact with her. She let out the breath she was holding.

 

When she first noticed him gone she had feared that he had left, or was forced to leave with someone, when she saw him in the chair she feared he had remembered his mission from seven months ago and had killed Steve while he slept. It was such a relief to see the both of them okay.

 

She walked over to the couch and sat next to Steve, setting the knife down on the coffee table. Steve eyed it, James didn’t looked surprised though.

 

“What the hell?” Steve breathed.

 

Veda shrugged, “It was unusual waking up alone, I kinda just thought the worst”.

 

James chimed in, “The worst being?”

 

Steve looked startled by James speaking after all his silence.

 

“Being, not good” she says. James rolls his eyes.

 

Steve smiles a bit, that’s something Bucky would definitely do. Veda gets up to go get herself a cup of coffee, Steve stands up and follows her into the kitchen.

 

As she pours her coffee he whispers to her, “I woke up to him just staring at me”. Veda just looks at him. “Why does he keep doing this right as he wakes up, turning into James?”

 

Veda takes a sip of her coffee then whispers back, “probably because it triggers him”.

 

Steve rests against the counter, “Waking up?” He manages to ask it as sarcastically as he can.

 

She just gives him a dumbfounded look, “Waking up with me there, Moron”. She goes to leave but he grabs her wrist and spins her around, “What do you mean?”

 

“What?” is all she says back, looking annoyed.

 

He lets go of her wrist and rests it on the counter top, “Did he use to wake up to you a lot?”

 

“James? Yeah, when we’d be on missions away from HQ we’d sleep”, she whispers casually.

 

Steve straightens at that. His hand resting back at his side, “Just sleep?”

 

She laughs at him, “Not usually, no. It’s not a big deal though”. At that she finally leaves the kitchen and returns to the couch.

 

It takes Steve a couple minutes before he comes back out to the room, by then James and Veda were gone, retreated back into the bedroom.

 

Steve pulled his track pants on and grabbed his phone and his keys as he headed out.

 

* * *

 

 

He ran for longer than usual that morning, he was upset, he ran when he was upset. He’s running his usual track, been at it for at least an hour, 28 laps to be specific. He can’t stop thinking about them… together. He keeps telling himself that it isn’t Bucky, it’s James, why is he jealous? He doesn’t have the right to be jealous. It’s a good thing running this path is like muscle memory or else he’d probably be lost. He stops, takes a breath.

 

“Hey!” it’s faint, too far away. “Steve?” shit, that’s Sam’s voice, he definitely isn’t in the mood for an explanation of his whereabouts the past seven months. Sam’s hand claps him on the shoulder, “I knew that was you, you have a very distinct shoulder to waist ratio man”. Steve turns to him.

 

Sam nearly thinks he’s got mixed up, this guy doesn’t really look like Steve, he’s got brown hair and a very lush beard. That isn’t like Steve at all.

 

Steve sighs, “I’m really sorry, Sam, I know I’ve been a terrible friend these past months”.

 

“What the fuck did you do to your face, man?”

 

He panics for a second, did he get hurt? He wipes his hand over his face where Sam was eyeing, as soon as he does he realizes, “Oh, right, the beard”.

 

“Yeah the beard”, Sam shoots as sarcastically as he possibly can.

 

Steve’s shoulders slump, “It’s a long story”.

 

Sam eyes him up and down, he looks off, “Maybe you can tell me over coffee then”.

 

* * *

 

 

They sit down at a table inside the Starbucks after they get their drinks, an Americano for Sam and a Chai Tea Latte for Steve. The shop is thankfully empty other than the baristas.

 

Sam stirs him from his scanning, “Don’t think anyone’s gonna recognize you, man”.

 

Steve nods, “I know, it’s been nice. I just don’t want anyone listening”. Sam’s eyebrows shoot up, “Why? Is this classified Avengers business?” Steve shakes his head, “It’s personal”.

 

That made Sam flinch, Steve didn’t really have a personal life from what he understood. “Okay well last I heard from you that Hydra lady was taking you to the guy that killed Fury, so what gives? Did she brainwash you or something?”

 

Steve shook his head, “How much do you know about me from before?”

 

Sam scoffed, “we learned all about you and the commandos in history class”.

 

He nodded, “It was Bucky”.

 

At this Sam just looked confused, “Your best friend? He was what?!”

 

Steve sighed for what felt like the fiftieth time this morning, “The man that she brought me to, he was Bucky”.

 

Sam rubbed at his temples, “Okay, what? You guys and your not staying dead thing is really kind of annoying. So what exactly happened to him?”

 

“Honestly I don’t know, he must’ve survived the fall from the train, Hydra must’ve found him or something”, he breathed out.

 

Sam continued, “So what, Hydra lady was protecting him or something? Why?”

 

“She told me she didn’t know who he was until before she abandoned Hydra, when she did figure out who he was she realized Hydra lied to her and that’s when she promised to get him away from them”, Steve sipped his latte.

 

Sam shook his head in confusion, “Wait, wait, wait, so Hydra lady is actually good?!”

 

Steve shrugged, “I guess. Bucky doesn’t remember me though, she said that Hydra put these words into his head that make him turn into The Winter Soldier, she’s trying to figure out how to get them out so that he can be him again”.

 

Sam nodded, “okay and you couldn’t tell me this earlier?”

 

“I didn’t know how you guys would react, you didn’t know Bucky, all you saw was The Winter Soldier”, he looked away from Sam and over to the baristas who weren’t paying them any attention.

 

Sam brought him back with a snap of his fingers, “So, how does the appearance change fit into all this?”

 

Steve takes another sip before saying, “She didn’t want him to recognize me because if he remembered then she wouldn’t feel comfortable putting him back into The Winter Soldier mindset, which she needs him in to get the words out or something”.

 

Sam finishes off his coffee, “Okay, well, I’m here man, anything you need. Where have you been staying, I went by your place a few times”.

 

“I’ve been staying with her and Buck, I just want to be there in case something happens”.

 

“Okay, well, I want at least a call every week so I know you aren’t dead in a ditch somewhere”, Sam says with a smirk.

 

Steve smiles back at him, “Okay, Mom”.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve heads back to the loft after he and Sam say their goodbyes. Veda is in the kitchen making scrambled eyes when he comes in.

 

“Hey”, she says glancing over to him, “Where have you been?”

 

He shuts the door behind him and sets his keys on the counter as he walks over to her. He stops a few feet away and motions to his pants.

 

She shakes her head, “I assumed you went running, you were gone for like 3 hours though”.

 

He grabs a fork from the drawer and stabs at some eggs in the pan, “I saw Sam”. He puts the fork full off eggs in his mouth.

 

She gives him her death glare as he chews the eggs, “Took you long enough, jeez”.

 

“You’re glad I saw him?”

 

She stops stirring the eggs, “Of course I am, it’s not like I don’t want you to see your friends”.

 

Steve pauses, “I guess I just assumed”.

 

“Don’t ever assume with me, Rogers”.

 

Steve looked around for James.

 

“He’s asleep, I was going to wake him up for eggs in a second here”, she continues stirring again.

 

Steve looks uncomfortable for a second, “James or…”

 

“James”, she looks away.

 

He rests his hand against the counter, “It’s fine you know, I get it, you have him back so you want him around”.

 

She takes the eggs off the stove and plates them, “I’m trying, you know I’m trying to get Bucky back, and I’m sorry that it has taken this long, but I’m not giving up”.

 

Steve smiles, “I know, thank you”.

 

“I’m going to go get him up so why don’t you get the eggs back out and I’ll make you some eggs of your own”.


End file.
